


Setting the Woods on Fire

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 03:13:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21439282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: A night on the town. Country-western adjacent.
Relationships: Hilda Spellman/Zelda Spellman
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Setting the Woods on Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lalalyds2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalyds2/gifts).

There are a lot of things a redhead can get away with that a blonde cannot, but yellow is not one of them. 

Hilda doesn’t know whether she’s thought this consciously or whether her subconscious has merely been intent on getting her in trouble on this particular evening. 

There are two main rules for going out with Zelda: 

You always say yes, and.

You never look better than she does. 

While Hilda has said her share of no—to both her good and her ill—she’s never considered herself to have broken the second, more important rule.

But as she’s sitting at her vanity transferring essentials from her regular purse to the clutch that more accurately matches her ensemble, Zelda emerges, immaculate, from the bathroom, and they lock eyes in the mirror. There’s something in Zelda’s eyes that’s dangerous. A flicker of something that could either be spectacularly fun or supremely painful.

“You look…” Zelda trails off, covers it by lighting a cigarette. “You know I can’t wear yellow. But you wear it.” She inhales deeply and smooths her skirt that objectively doesn’t need smoothing. “Well. You wear it well. I’ll go start the car.”

Zelda disappears. 

Hilda is left at her vanity with a monogrammed silk handkerchief in her hand. 

She’d been on the fence about whether this item was essential enough to stuff into her tiny clutch, but now she’s on the fence about whether Zelda is upset about her outfit. If she changes there will be questions and frustration at the nonanswers. If she doesn’t. Well they’re going out drinking and dancing. Under different circumstances this might be a fight or at least petty jabs. But in public with mortals, the competition is already won. Zelda will be bought drinks and asked to dance, and Hilda will order a bowl of chili soup and then beat a few old men at pool. And her transgression will be forgotten. 

But still there had been that atypical flicker. She hopes it had meant spectacular fun. Something different than their established norm. 

Maybe like it had been in Nashville when they’d pretended not to know each other—pretended they were just anonymous beehives and bouffants in anonymous honky tonks, running into each other accidentally and fortuitously to dance and drink and jam. Hilda had always been the better pianist, but Zelda had proven surprisingly adept at slide guitar. A perfect combination, close harmony, smiling at each other as they sang cheating songs.

Hilda had worn a lot of yellow back then.

It had been spectacular fun until the cheating songs had gotten too real and it had devolved into supreme pain.

Hilda tucks the handkerchief into her clutch and descends the stairs.

xxx

Zelda’s pressed against a lithe, lank man in a Stetson, swaying in three-quarter time. It’s quite the juxtaposition. But it always is.

Hilda would be hard pressed to imagine a man who would be worthy of Zelda, could match her style and elegance, might look right dancing with her.

However.

Hilda had been asked to dance, begged to dance, bought drink after drink.

She looks so good in yellow.

But she’s turned everyone down. The principle of the matter. Or self-preservation.

Either Zelda hasn’t noticed or she’s pretended not to. Like Nashville in so many ways.

Hilda’s already eaten her bowl of chili soup and has already beaten two old men at pool. She’s now drinking a beer—bought for her by a boy very obviously underage—as she peruses the jukebox’s selections.

She chooses a song they’d sung together, a song from times gone by.

Their eyes meet amid the sawdust. And there’s no competition, just harmony.

“I’ll go start the car,” Zelda says.

xxx

Sometimes when they don’t talk they understand each other better.

Sometimes when they don’t talk it’s a volcano: there are obvious signs that an eruption has recently occurred and will happen again soon.

They don’t talk as they drive.

Zelda has not had as many drinks bought for her by trashy mortal bar admirers, but she probably ought not be behind the wheel regardless.

The Lincoln Towncar zips along dim highway. Tight corners. Dark overpasses. A sharp corner into a state park. An even sharper corner into a parking space close to the river.

“A fine night,” Zelda says finally.

xxx

The yellow dress is pooled haphazardly in a windswept pile of oak leaves, and Hilda’s naked back is chafing against the oak’s bark. She’s not complaining. Zelda’s satin and beneath that Zelda’s body—emanating heat and vibrating with both suppressed magic and repressed desire, which Hilda hadn’t meant to suss out but to her credit she is a little drunk—is encompassing Hilda’s naked front. Zelda’s hands are running up and down Hilda’s goose-bumped biceps, and they’re looking at each other in the moonlight.

“It might be just a touch chilly for skinny dipping,” Hilda says.

Zelda’s hands still on Hilda’s shoulders. She looks at her hands, each in turn, and then back at Hilda’s face.

“You’re right. But.” Zelda begins unbuttoning her own blouse. “There’s plenty of timber for a nice fire afterward.”

Zelda’s pet felony has always been murder, but she knows Hilda has always had an affinity for arson. They’re both crimes of passion. A murder is personal, intimate. Blunt or sharp. Fast or slow. Choices a killer makes. But arson.

Arson has a certain nuance. A certain unpredictable, uncontrollable nature. Someone sloshes accelerant, lights a fire, and then can’t stop it, even if she wants to. A new, leaping life obliterating an old, dry one. There is agency and there is capitulation. There is what there is and nothing more or less.

Zelda’s blouse joins Hilda’s dress. And her skin, shining alabaster in the silver night, breaks out in answering goosebumps. Her hands, again, are on Hilda’s shoulders. They both regard them, as if it hadn’t been a conscious act but some compulsion. Hilda reaches around and finds the zipper to Zelda’s skirt, still staring at Zelda’s left hand on her, still feeling the bark cutting into her spine.

The zip is too loud—jarring and strange. It’s not the babbling of the brook, and it’s not the wind in the trees, and it’s not a raccoon scurrying in the brush, and it’s not the hoot of an owl. It’s the synthetic, foreign sound of a man-made garment relinquishing its hold on a body. A familiar sound in the wrong location. She continues anyway. And the skirt finds its way on top of the blouse and the dress.

“If we think it’s chilly now. Well. We’d better not wait too much longer,” Hilda says.

Zelda extricates herself and slinks out of her bra and panties even as she’s walking purposefully toward the brook.

Hilda watches the muscles contract in Zelda’s back and then takes in a breath. On the exhale she divests herself of her own undergarments and follows.

The brook is shallow and slow and cold, the bottom rough with pebbles and coarse sand.

“Satan’s legion! Why’d I let you talk me into this?!” Zelda says. She’s waist deep and shivering.

Hilda doesn’t mention that it had been Zelda’s idea. Instead she pounces, putting aside her own discomfort at the cold of the water, hands reaching out toward collarbones, trajectory precisely calibrated to dunk them both. 

Underwater, in the moonlit dark, Zelda’s eyes are more green than anything that has ever been green. The green that in heraldry means hope and eternity.

Hilda holds Zelda under long enough to contemplate this and watch the bubbles from both of their mouths. But murder’s never been her favorite, so she lets go, floats up, shakes out her hair.

Zelda surfaces a second later, sputtering and coughing. She stands and twists her hair, wringing water from it. Her breasts are pert and glistening, nipples peaked and somehow foreboding. She glides out of the brook and begins shuffling together a mound of dry leaves and twigs, tinder and kindling.

Hilda had expected some kind of reprimand. But none had come. 

She pulls herself from the water, says,

“That was the quickest skinny dip I’ve ever dipped.”

Zelda says,

“It served its purpose.”

Hilda wants to ask what that means. Hilda wants to pry into Zelda’s brain for the answer instead of asking. She does neither, says,

“Good thing you always have matches.”

Zelda’s blowing gently on the incipient flame at the base of her a-frame. She looks at Hilda over her shoulder, says,

“Yes. Good thing.”

It’s a smoldering thing, that new fire, that look between them.

Zelda places a downed limb strategically and then lays herself out, just as strategically.

“Aren’t you cold?” Zelda says, eyes closed, toes curled against flames, body rigid on soft earth and pine needles.

“Yes,” Hilda says. She takes a few steps forward and looks down at Zelda’s placid face and form. “May I join you?”

Zelda laughs, and Hilda watches her rib cage work.

“What do you want? An engraved invitation?”

Hilda sits next to her. Zelda says,

“You’re so obtuse. I can’t stand you.”

But Zelda’s rolling over, parting Hilda’s knees.

“You’re so obtuse. I like that in a woman,” Zelda says.

They look at each other. Hilda’s looking down; Zelda’s looking up. And they’re both looking. Very intensely. The moon’s hidden herself behind a cloud, and the fire is intermittently dancing—a spark and a hiss and a tremulous, jumping shadow. An orange glow catches on Zelda’s scapula.

“But what do you like in me, specifically?” Hilda says.

“Everything,” Zelda says. 

“Prove it,” Hilda says.

Zelda laughs, and a puff of hot air lands on Hilda’s inner left thigh. She shivers. Zelda’s mouth closes in on the spot where the air had landed, her tongue lapping languidly.

“Is it hot enough?” Zelda says against Hilda’s quadricep.

“What?”

“The fire. Is it hot enough? You’re trembling.”

Hilda chances a glance at Zelda, who is smirking.

“What’s the opposite of obtuse? That’s what you are, and I can’t stand you,” Hilda says.

“Prove it,” Zelda says and then she advances, teeth, tongue, smirk, and all.

Hilda leans back on her elbows. The acorn under her left forearm is nothing compared to Zelda’s hot, deft mouth at her center. Soon. 

Soon her elbows fail her and she’s flat on her back, knees knocking at Zelda’s ears, fingers at Zelda’s scalp.

A sharp cry in the night. 

It’s not a raccoon in the brush or an owl’s hooting. A different animal entirely, foreign and familiar and out of place but perfectly there at that moment.

Zelda is triumphant above her, green eyes and glistening lips.

Hilda stretches her arm, rummages in the pile of discarded clothes and accoutrements. 

Hilda shakes out her monogrammed silk handkerchief and wipes Zelda’s chin.


End file.
